The Poison Artist

The first half of this sinister, surreal psychological thriller is deeply intoxicating, darkly beguiling and more than a little bewildering. It’s magnificent modern gothic which unleashes a powerful fever dream upon the familiar mechanics of the police procedural.

Reality warps as toxicologist Caleb Maddox stumbles into the seamy sidestreets of old San Francisco. His precarious research project – into the biological processes underpinning the experience of pain – falls by the wayside when his world is overwhelmed by green-tinged wormwood and a woman whose affections are as unpredictable as the absinthe she offers.

Author Jonathan Moore switches seamlessly from a skilful presentation of solid science – using familiar forensic show more methods of detection into an intriguing serial killer murder mystery – to the disorienting hallucinations of sexually-driven delirium. Why did Caleb’s girlfriend abruptly reject him so violently? What awful atrocity scarred his childhood? Who is the shadowy, sensual femme fatale? What links a series of unexplained, sadistic deaths? Gripping doesn’t begin to describe it.
And then the whole elegant edifice collapses under its own invention with a hirrobily predictable ‘plot twist. All of the brilliant build-up, the intrigue and atmosphere, led inexorably to… the inevitable. What a wasted opportunity.

The trouble with The Poison Artist is that the first half is so good, so plausible, so seductive that any ending might’ve been a disappointment. The actual ‘reveal’ seriously derails the credibility of the early narrative, and telegraphs its arrival in ten-foot high letters. Yet even though I found the finale frankly daft, I’m still thrilled that I encountered The Poison Artist.

And I have no hesitation recommending it. Seldom have I seen the subtle lure of erotic obsession so beautifully rendered in all its perfidious finery. Worth reading for that alone.
7/10

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Caleb's a coroner in San Francisco. Devastated because his girlfriend has left him, he is drinking late one night at Maxfield's in San Francisco where he has a strange encounter with a beautiful woman, who immediately disappears. He becomes obsessed, and draws a portrait of her to help him find her. At the same time, some mysterious murders are happening in San Francisco, and he gets involved in figuring out what happened, through the means of chemical traces found in the bodies. The stories dovetail in an unexpected, but very very creepy way. I had a hard time reading the last third of the book. The author, who also wrote the excellent Five Decembers under a different name, seems to know his way around autopsies, because he included show more several in each book. Read Five Decembers before reading this one. show less

TPA starts off well, there’s a fight, a thrown glass, blood, an ex and a mystery woman. The subject of the fight was kept hidden from the reader for a while, as is much else about Caleb. After a while though, Caleb is a drag. He’s an emo kid all grown up, but still mooning, pining, daydreaming. But as more and more of his childhood trauma is revealed, you almost forgive him. Then after a while, the allure of the reason for the breakup becomes annoying, too. The ex in question talks about it directly to Caleb, but obliquely. No one would talk like that. During that discussion I guessed at a reason and I was right. What I didn’t guess is the deeper reason for the vasectomy; ostensibly because of his father’s sins, but really show more because of his own.

In a sense I read the rest of the book in spite of itself. The mystery was a good one, but boy the Emmaline character really got to be too much. As a reader, you know she’s full of shit you just don’t know how much. I wish Moore had toned her down a bit. Overall though he fooled me and I was happy about that. I should have twigged, but I let my guard down and just went with the story. Sometimes it’s better that way. show less

The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore is a very highly recommended dark atmospheric mystery/psychological thriller.

Caleb Maddox has just had a fight with his girlfriend Bridget. She threw a glass at him, which hit his forehead, cutting it open. It looks like their relationship is over. Caleb left the house and is staying at a hotel. After cleaning up, Caleb goes on a bender to mourn her departure. He ends up at a bar called the House of Shields where he meets a mysterious woman who is drinking absinthe. She totally captures Caleb's interest and imagination. Even while he is drinking to excess over the loss of Bridget, he is obsessed with the mystery woman and seeks her out at various bars.

Amid Caleb's hard drinking, he hears from his show more friend, Henry Newcomb, a medical examiner, who has a professional question. Caleb is a toxicologist who also has an ongoing research study into pain and tolerance levels. Apparently while Caleb has been drinking his sorrow away, there is a serial killer loose. Several bodies of males have washed up Henry has a few questions about the lab results they have obtained and wants Caleb to test some of the samples. Caleb also has two police detectives questioning him over a man who was at the House of Shields the night he was there drinking.

The action flips back and forth between Caleb's excessive drinking and obsession over the mystery woman and helping Henry with the murder cases. There are a lot of unanswered questions in this moody, pensive mystery. Really, most of the book will leave you feeling like it is set in a dark, gloomy night, with everything hazy and vague - as if the story is incomplete. And it is incomplete for almost the whole novel. You won't learn what Caleb and Bridget fought about for most of the book. While you question Caleb's inexplicable obsession and pursuit of the mysterious woman, you won't actually know the real reason why until the end.

The writing is sumptuous, both beautifully crafted and wonderfully descriptive. This could leave some readers with the same dilemma I felt. The quality of the writing kept me reading, but I was growing a bit impatient with dearth of solid information presented. The clues to the mystery are extremely slow in being revealed. The strength of Caleb's obsession with and pursuit of the mystery woman seemed too intense for simply seeing her after having a fight with a girlfriend that he says he loves. And the fixation on drinking absinthe...

The ending is worth all the questions and doubts I had while reading The Poison Artist. I even, briefly, considered setting the book aside because it seemed too vague, but I'm glad I kept reading because the ending was incredible - shocking, dismaying, and frightfully satisfying.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Houghton Mifflin for review purposes.
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Rated 4.5 stars. This review has spoilers further below, so don't read them if you haven't read the book.

This book was great. It has an odd, creepy feel. Starts off with the main character, Caleb, getting dumped after a fight with his girlfriend. He's had a traumatic event in his childhood, where he went missing for a couple weeks. But now he's a successful toxicologist who's studying pain. Then there are men who've been found drowned, but maybe were actually murdered. Caleb's friend is the ME so they start working those cases together. And of course, there's the mystery woman who Caleb sees at a bar.
I loved the way this book was written, since it starts off fairly normal, but then the oddness builds up to a really crazy ride.
I would show more read more from this author.

***********SPOILERS***************

From the beginning, I had a bad feeling about Caleb, especially once the issue of the funding for his research was mentioned. And although I didn't guess the exact details of Emmeline's "story", I wasn't surprised at all by the revelations about Caleb. show less

Yikes!. How to review this book and avoid spoilers, and while I generally have no problem with spoilers, in this case letting you know that the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a train might ruin the splat.

Caleb's girlfriend, Bridget, has left him after throwing an ashtray at his head. We are not sure precisely what the infraction might have been (nor do we ever find out for certain although the hints are there,) but while drowning his sorrows in the bar he sees a stunning woman, an instant infatuation. Caleb is doing research on the physical manifestations of pain, e.g. hormones released, etc. Chemicals. "Guy gets hurt, his endocrine system responds. Adrenaline, endorphins. Damaged cells dump out different histamines. There’s show more paracrine signaling going on—that’s cell-to-cell communication—with compounds like prostaglandin and thromboxane. Bunch of other stuff. Pain leaves markers, and I’m following them. To quantify it."

He's also an expert in bizarre toxins. “Batrachotoxin." ...."The median lethal dose is ninety micrograms—a couple grains of salt,” Caleb said. “And all you’d have to do is touch it.” People start turning up loaded with this toxin.

I shall say no more other than to recommend this book if you have an interest in the bizarre mechanisms of the mind. Whether the events here represent anything approaching reality is a bit frightening. show less

Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist living in San Francisco. At first we don't know too much about him or what has happened to him; but after a few chapters we start to build on the story; and what a disturbing story it is!
There have been a couple of dissaperances ending in deaths in the San Francisco area, and Caleb seems to have a lead on the serial killer behind them. Henry, a close friend of his who happens to be the ME, is helping him uncover the truth behind it all.
Filled with guilt and remorse over the breakup with his girlfriend Bridget, Caleb finds himself in the middle of an affair with a strange, and quite unique woman called Emmeline. When he starts piecing things together and suspects the involvement of Emmeline in the killings, show more he goes in a downward spiral that will have you turning pages at lighting speed just to find out who is who.
Although I really liked this book, I didn't care for the 50's noir vibe it had to it; but that is just because I have never liked that genre. Other than that, I agree with Mr. King when he said it was one of the most terrifying reads after Red Dragon. Quite disturbing. show less